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95 Babies – The Power of the First Hour

Today, Save the Children have launched their new campaign “95 Babies” and it’s an important message they want to get out there.

IF EVERY MUM HAD THE HELP THEY NEED TO BREASTFEED THEIR BABY DURING THE FIRST FRAGILE MOMENTS AFTER BIRTH

WE COULD SAVE 95 TINY LIVES EVERY HOUR

Now, I know there are some people who will immediately jump to the defensive and say that women have the right to choose, and anyway, some women can’t and other things. But this campaign isn’t about that. It’s about the fact that around the world, babies are dying because they are not breastfed. Here in the UK, if a women chooses not to breastfeed and to give formula, well so be it. It’s disappointing, but I don’t want to get into that now. If that’s the decision she makes, then her baby will still be fed. This is about the babies who won’t be fed, or will be fed in a way which puts their life at risk.

When I was at uni twenty years ago and I decided to join the boycott of Nestle products, which was in place due to the methods they employed to market their formula in the developing world, little did I think that we would still be here now. Twenty years on, and the marketing practices have changed, but Nestle, and others, still put their profits ahead of the lives of their customers. Their marketing practices directly contribute to the number of babies who die each year in the developing world.

In the developing world, formula feeding can be dangerous for so many reasons – dirty water and over dilution being two of them. We need to make women more aware of the benefits of breastfeeding, for themselves and their babies – and the risks of not doing so. And we need the formula companies to play a part in this. Save the Children is asking Nestle and Danone to give over a third of their product packing to warnings of the potential health risks of not breastfeeding.

And if you need more persuasion to help, then just look at this video. It’s full of cute, healthy babies – 95 of them. This is what 95 babies look like and this is how many could be saved everyhourif more women in the developing world were helped to breastfeed.